Columbia crew catches a mysterious TIGER in the Indian Ocean

Columbia crew catches a mysterious TIGER in the Indian Ocean
WASHINGTON -- An unprecedented flash observed by the space shuttle Columbia crew in 2003 over the Indian Ocean may be a new type of transient luminous event, like lightning sprites, but one that is not necessarily caused by a thunderstorm. The discharge was observed less than two weeks before the shuttle was lost during its Earth reentry.

The authors describe the discharge as a Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red, or TIGER, event. It was recorded by a video camera in the near-infrared spectrum in the nighttime sky just south of Madagascar on 20 January 2003. The authors analyzed the video several months later and found what visually looks like a bright flash. They report that the emission did not resemble any known class of luminous events, which typically appear in conjunction with thunderstorm activity. [continued]

A new atmospheric phenomenon was caught on video by the crew of the space shuttle Columbia just days before the shuttle broke apart, new findings suggest.

...Yoav Yair of the Open University in Ra'anana, Israel, and colleagues spent more than a year analysing the video, which was originally taken to study atmospheric dust. But a single frame of the video - representing just 33 milliseconds - shows a mysterious reddish glow in the night sky on 20 January 2003.

"I'm not sure what we saw," says Yair. "I just know it wasn't something we were used to seeing - it was something extraordinary." The glow occurred about 150 kilometres above the ocean near Madagascar and does not appear to be linked with thunderstorms. [continued]